


we have always fought

by 100indecisions



Category: Letter To An Unknown Soldier, Original Work
Genre: Gen, Letter To An Unknown Soldier - Freeform, Poetry, Women in the Military, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-27
Updated: 2014-07-27
Packaged: 2018-02-10 17:17:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2033352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/100indecisions/pseuds/100indecisions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if, soldier, you were not a man at all? Written for the "Letter To An Unknown Soldier" project.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we have always fought

Bronze boy in a train station, representative of millions  
Who lie without gravestones, ranks, names, or memories—  
What if your memorial is only half of the truth?  
You stand above an inscription honoring “men and women who gave their lives”  
But you yourself are a man, because you are a soldier and a figure in history,  
And so you must have been, because men fight and women wait at home and pray.  
  
But if you are truly unknown, a blank slate,  
Why should you watch the trains with the face of only half your country’s population?  
What if, soldier, you were not a man at all?      
  
Because women have always fought.  
We too have always died in the service of causes greater than ourselves—  
Or, less poetically and more realistically, in the service of  
Necessity, desperation, bravado, home, family, survival,  
The belief that death means more on a battlefield (until it actually happens  
And then death is all the same, everywhere, no matter how it comes).  
We cut our hair and bound our breasts,  
Or treated the wounded and grabbed a gun to defend them in the chaos,  
Or joined our sisters when we were not allowed to stand with our brothers,  
Or took up weapons to defend our homes because our brothers were already dead.  
  
Would it be a feminist victory, soldier,  
If you were not as we see you,  
If you left behind a void in the shape of a mother or daughter or wife or sister  
Instead of a father or son or husband or brother?  
Or you were as we see you, but you fought beside a woman and never knew,  
Or if one of the soldiers you killed could have been your sister, not your brother,  
And it didn’t matter, because it was war, and nothing mattered?  
  
If you died alone in the mud, soldier, then all this makes no difference to you;  
Death is and always has been a great equalizer, after all,  
And wherever you might be now, the way we remember you  
Is not your concern.  
What we believe changes nothing about the weight of your soul.  
  
But it should make a difference to us, today, if we forgot you  
Not because you were one death too many,  
Not because you were just another number in a history book  
And individuals are always buried under the weight of statistics,  
But because we didn’t expect you, and so we didn’t see you,  
And we forgot that you existed at all.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Written somewhat spontaneously in one afternoon as a submission to the [Letter To An Unknown Soldier project](http://www.1418now.org.uk/letter/), which I'd been kind of meaning to do for a while but didn't have any ideas until last night. I'm just glad I was inspired now instead of, you know, after the deadline that's only a week away. This is the first poem I've finished in six years, so that's cool anyway. Originally posted [here](http://www.1418now.org.uk/letter/kyra-sherwood/).
> 
> This poem was primarily influenced by two things: my frustration with Ubisoft's narrow and actually inaccurate view on the role of women in history, and Kameron Hurley's article ["'We Have Always Fought': Challenging the 'Women, Cattle and Slaves' Narrative."](http://aidanmoher.com/blog/featured-article/2013/05/we-have-always-fought-challenging-the-women-cattle-and-slaves-narrative-by-kameron-hurley/)


End file.
